Thursday, the neighbor's old gelding showed up at the barn again.
This time, my hub was home and he heard a ruckus up at the barn. He was easily caught with sweet feed in a pan and put in the arena. So hub hops onto the four wheeler and heads over. It's almost a half mile by road, but not far through the woods. There wasn't anyone at the mobile home, so he went down to the woodlot and found some guy working on the log splitter.
They walked the poor old fart home, commenting on his terrible feet and general lack of care. The gelding had pushed over a part of the fencing-which is light weight cattle panels that are in very poor condition. Hub and the guy stood the fence back up and put in one panel at a 90, to help keep it up....got the owners phone number and left.
We talked about it when I got home, an we both feel really sorry for the old guy. No care, by himself, no one lives on the property. There was the remains of one round bale, maybe 60 pounds of mostly trodden and terrible looking hay left. He did have water in some sort of tote, but hub said it stank from ten feet away and the entire inside was blackened.
A call to the owner revealed he couldn't afford more than $150 a month in board (which is a crock because I know how well he does with his firewood business) or we could have him for free. So we discussed what it would take to get him healthier-feet, teeth, joint sups for those terrible knees, etc. And heck my hay costs alone are way higher than $150 a month-which pays for about two round bales only.
We agreed to take the poor old fart, but we couldn't find the owner. Sigh. Hub is now gone for two weeks working so I suppose we will let it go until then. If he shows up in the meantime, I think I will just stall him and go put a note on the log splitter and have myself a crippled up old horse I don't need, but feel compassion for.
And I will have a word with the AC officer that responded the last time. To let him know that the horse was out, feet haven't been trimmed, and that there is no one living on the property. Not that it will do any good, but the officer wasn't doing a very good job determining the facts surrounding that horse.
2 comments:
Sometimes it's just not the horses fault, I hate bad owners.
It isn't the horses' fault at all.
The guy hasn't paid much attention to that horse in years....I have no idea why he keeps him, he moved onto another property miles away about two years ago. I am pretty sure that days go by without anyone checking on him :(
The poor old bugger is going to need a lot of trims, and some serious joint sups. But I am pretty sure the knees are stable by now since they felt hard to the touch. Fused, perhaps?
And he does get around pretty well so that's something...he doesn't seem to be in evident pain, but his very long toes and underrun heels have got to hurt. I am sure that there is some serious separation of the laminae.
It won't break the bank to get him through this winter and see how he does over the coming summer. I can't imagine anyone taking him on as a companion horse based on his legs alone-but it's possible I might run across someone.
If not, well then I can hope he gets along with Sully and I can turn them out together at some point.
Post a Comment